Friday, January 8, 2010

Weiner to Be Honored

Readers of the blog will recall the dispatches of Mark S. Weiner, Rutgers-Newark Law, from his Fulbright in Iceland. Now comes news that Rutgers is honoring him as a Distinguished Research Scholar:

Rutgers Law School-Newark Professor Mark S. Weiner (left) will be honored as 2009/2010 Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Scholar at Rutgers University, Newark, during a Feb. 23 reception and lecture. Steven J. Diner, chancellor of Rutgers-Newark, will present the award to Weiner, who will then give a talk titled “Clan, Culture, and the Concept of Law: Lessons from Iceland.” The ceremonies will begin at 4 p.m. in the Paul Robeson Campus Center, 350 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

The professor has just returned from the University of Akureyi, Iceland, 40 miles south of the Arctic Circle, where he spent the fall 2009 semester as a Fulbright Scholar, teaching an intensive course on U.S. constitutional law. He also conducted research for a new book about the legal and cultural significance of the clan, or extended kinship network, and its relation to the growth of the modern state. Among its topics, the book will consider how legal developments in the middle ages shed light on current efforts to develop the rule of law in weak states and regions of the world which nurture international terrorism. “I believe what happened in Iceland in the 13th century can help us understand what’s happening right now in Afghanistan and Somalia,” explains Weiner. His Feb. 23 talk will address those topics and provide an overview of his work in progress.